Douglas Carswell's Blog

Who kept Britain out of the permanent Euro bailout fund?

Alistair Darling - according to documents released by the Treasury following an FoI request I put in.  Read them here.

As Chancellor, Mr Darling "made it clear that the UK could not be part of the [permanent bailout] fund as it was relevant to euro area countries only"

Mr Darling made it clear "there could be no question of a residual liability on non-euro area member states".

My problem the Coalition's Eurozone bailout policy is not that Alistair Darling, the former Chancellor, kept us out of the permanent fund (EFSF) and that we then went along with that decision.  My beef is that Darling signed us up to all the other non-EFSF liabilities, which we also went along with.

It is pretty clear that we inherited a policy from Gordon Brown's time in government - devised largely by the mandarins - and that we then went along with it.  That is the problem.  

It will not do to imply that the bits of that policy we like are all down to us - and the bits we cannot defend so easily, are all due to bad Al.  

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